Hamlet

Hamlet is a Play written by Shakespeare probably about 1599-1601 during the renaissance. The renaissance refers to European movements in art, literature and philosophy and lasted from the 14th century until about the mid-17th century. It is known as the rebirth of learning, especially the renewed interest in the study of classical antiquity. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a true renaissance play because we can find in it a lot of subjects that were of interest such as melancholy, the nature of man with the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy and of course the nature of life and death. Hamlet is considered as a tragedy. According to Aristotle, tragedy is “the imitation of an action that is serious… A form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, presenting a reversal of fortune, involving persons renowned and of superior attainments, and it should be written in poetry (verse) embellished with every kind of artistic expression.” What makes Shakespeare’s Hamlet a tragedy?

Tragedy is a form of drama that involves imitating serious actions, eliciting feelings of pity and fear to the audience, presenting a reversal of fortune and admirable characters, using poetic language. In hamlet, we have one predominant hero that’s going to die at the end and the play is based around him. The events in Hamlet are themselves exceptional because their results extend beyond the individual (death most of the time).

At the time, plays based on revenge were in vogue as today violence is found in any commercial movie. Shakespeare took over and worked on those famous plays where the base theme is revenge. Madness was seen and used as a maneuver to lead the play into a tragedy (Hamlet is in some way mad, Ophelia gets mad…). After they meet the ghost Hamlet warns Horatio that, in order to accomplish what he asked him, he’ll have to change his behavior and ask Horatio to keep it a secret. Neither additional comments nor winks, there is no...